The term “multivantaged assessment method” (MVAM) was introduced, in 1984 by Martin M. Katz and co-investigators in their report of the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Collaborative Study of the Psychobiology of Depression. It is based on a dimensional conceptualization of mental disorders, and the assumption that mental disorders are structured by interaction between their measurable emotional and behavioral components. Because of the many ways these components can be manifested, in a multivantaged assessment, methods of assessment from several “vantage” points are combined.   The prototype multivantaged assessment includes quantified observational methods, such as ratings scales by experts, subjects’ judgment on current state, and measurement of cognitive and psychomotor performances. The multivantaged assessment method was employed in a series of studies in depression, in the Departments of  Psychiatry and Pharmacology in the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, by Katz and his associates, and the term reappeared in 2004, twenty years after its introduction, in a report of these studies on the “onset and sequence of clinical actions” of antidepressants, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.  Information on the development and definition of the concept of MVAM was presented by Katz in 2013, in his monograph, Depression and Drugs. The Neurobehavioral Structure of a Psychological Storm.

Katz MM. Depression and Drugs: The Neurobehavioral Structure of a Psychological Storm.  New York; Springer: 2013, pp. 21-34.

Katz MM, Houston JP, Brannan S, Bowden CL, Berman N, Swann A, Frazer A. A multivantaged behavioral method for measuring onset and sequence of the clinical actions of antidepressants.International J of Neuropsychopharmacology 2004; 7: 471 – 9.

Katz MM, Koslow SH, Berman N, Secunda S, Maas JW, Casper R,  Kocsis J, Stokes P. A multivantaged approach to the measurement of behavioral and affect states for clinical and psychobiological research.  Psychological Reports Monograph 1984; 55:  619 – 73

Martin M .Katz

May 1, 2014.